As has been speculated and reported all over the place these last few days, VMware announced the free virtualization platform (the platform formally known as GSX) - VMware Server.

Trying to promote and advance the adoption of virtualization in the community, VMware is giving away (yes, that means free) one of its server virtualization platforms.  What can it do?

VMware lists the benefits as:

Benefits of VMware Server

• Provision a new server in minutes without investing in new hardware.
• Run Windows and Linux operating systems and applications on the same physical server.
• Increase the utilization of a physical server.
• Move virtual machines from one physical host to another without re-configuration.

And VMware claims VMware Server will offer the following:

With VMware Server you can:

• Streamline software development and testing by allowing developers to create multiple environments with different operating systems on the same server.
• Evaluate software in ready-to-run virtual machines without installation and configuration.
• Re-host legacy operating systems such as Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server in a virtual machine running on new hardware and operating system.
• Simplify server provisioning by building a virtual machine once and deploying it multiple times.
• Leverage pre-built, ready-to-run virtual appliances that include virtual hardware, operating system and application environments. Virtual appliances for Web, email, proxy and other infratructure services are available for download from the VMTN Virtual Machine Center.

And offers the following feature-packed capabilities:

• Support for any standard x86 hardware 
• Support for a wide variety of Linux and Windows host operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems 
• Support for a wide variety of Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and Windows guest operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems 
• Support for Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors 
• Quick and easy, wizard-driven installation similar to any desktop software 
• Quick and easy virtual machine creation with a virtual machine wizard 
• Virtual machine monitoring and management with an intuitive, user friendly remote console                    
                 

VMware Server is the first commercially available server virtualization product with support for 64-bit virtual machines and Intel Virtualization Technology, a set of Intel hardware platform enhancements specifically designed to enhance virtualization solutions.

VMware Server is the first step to VMware Virtual Infrastructure

While VMware Server is a compelling product for new virtualization users, VMware Virtual Infrastructure products—ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VirtualCenter with VMotion—enable companies to implement large-scale production server consolidation, business continuity, and enterprise desktop solutions with enterprise-class performance, high availability, manageability and security. View a comparison between VMware Server and VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

It can be downloaded Here.